Thank you John Howard - for gun control

By Graham Cooke

Two incidents that made the Australian news this morning involved firearms. First there was the case of a religious cult, Agape Ministries International. Police raiding its Adelaide headquarters had found a shipping container stashed with prohibited weapons, slow-burning fuses, detonator cords and around 20,000 rounds of ammunition.

In Melbourne an obviously disturbed young man who attacked a bus driver and tried to steal his bus, was subdued when a police officer shot him in the chest after he produced a knife and capsicum spray had failed to subdue him. The offender is currently in a stable condition in hospital.

I do not wish to comment on the specifics of either incident, but it occurred to me that it is because I live in Australia that I know so much about them

They are news because they are so unusual.

How much would I have learnt about these stories if I had been living in Los Angles or New York?

The fact of a religious cult stashing weapons might have raised a headline or two, but probably not the blanket coverage it has received on radio, television and in newspapers here. As for the police shooting incident - well the guy's not dead, he didn't kill anyone, no one was even injured. No story.

How fortunate are we that firearms are so rare in this country that their use, even by the police in the legitimate pursuit of arresting a suspect, is news. Let's give thanks that we will never have situations as does happen in the United States, where a simple incident of road rage results in handguns being produced with multiple deaths and injuries.

When future historians look back on the Howard Government - and I really mean look back, much as we do today on the 19th century with all the main players long dead and only the bare records of the day and their consequences as a guide - I believe they will list its greatest legacy as not the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax, or its economic management, but its strict firearms control legislation in the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre.

We are now an effectively disarmed country. Those who wish to practice the art of pistol or rifle shooting can do so under strictly controlled conditions on registered ranges. A few individuals, such as farmers, are allowed to keep registered weapons for use on the land.

There will always be illegal ways for sophisticated criminal elements to acquire firearms - witness the active gangland environment in Melbourne - but the old American catch-cry: 'if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns' is largely irrelevant here.

We live in a society which is generally safe and which has considerable respect for human life. Thank you, John Howard for that.